Brendan McCord (@mbren...), quoting Jash Dholani (@oldbooksg...)
— quoting Jash Dholani (@oldbooksg...)
Brendan McCord ... @mbren... · 1h
"You have no choice about whether to have a philosophy."
Jash Dhola... @oldbooksg... · 2h
Ayn Rand explains why it's impossible to get away from the question of values
[Embedded excerpt of Ayn Rand text:]
"VALUES cannot be separated from any human activity. In this sense, anything man does is a matter of choice. He can do it or not. He decides whether he'll do it, and if so, how. It is impossible to create a work of art without some kind of selectivity directing one's actions. Man cannot escape the fact that he must make a choice. When you attempt to re-create reality—whether it's a painting, a statue, or a novel—you must decide what aspects of reality you're going to use. Directing your choice will be your philosophical core of values. [highlighted:] You have no choice about whether to have a philosophy. The choice is whether you know your philosophy and have chosen it consciously—or whether you are at the mercy of your subconscious, of chance generalizations and undigested abstractions accepted on faith from others without any clear understanding and decision on your part..."
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
A philosophy/Ayn Rand quote about the inescapability of having values, shared without direct AI content. Tangentially relevant to Nathan's interest in AI values/alignment insofar as the "you have no choice about whether to have a philosophy — only whether it's examined" argument parallels debates about whether AI systems necessarily have values (trained or emergent) versus being value-neutral tools, though the tweet itself doesn't make that connection explicit.